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Sustainable tourism plan difficult to make, let alone enforce

Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.

Thomas Hardy

Back in the day when every politician, many business owners and lots of hangers-on knelt before the altar of tourism promotion, a friend was unimpressed.

He was wont to say that it might be a good thing to put gates up on all the highways from the cities, particularly on holiday weekends, to keep the tourists out of this particular area of heaven on earth that we call home.

At the time, and even in some circles today, officialdom saw tourists as the source of easy bucks to boost the local economy, ooh and aww in the right places, and generally make our region better for their presence.

Today the emphasis is slightly different. So different in fact that radio ads could be heard over much of the summer discouraging people from coming to the northern part of the Bruce Peninsula. Because of the crowds, the ads said, people were just going to be disappointed.

Now a consulting firm has been hired to help find ways to ease overcrowding at natural attractions on the Bruce.

Certainly promoters and municipal officials are still saying that tourist visits are a welcome boost to the area. However, in the past few years, vast numbers of these visitors have overwhelmed the region’s capacity to accommodate them.

My friend from back then might be forgiven for saying, “I told you so.”

Among the concerns is a need to ensure natural attractions aren’t trampled. Big numbers of people tend to do that, you know.

So now the consultants – local government always needs consultants – are to produce something called a “sustainable tourist management plan.”

The consultants have been asked to inventory attractions and accommodations and assess their ecological, cultural, social infrastructure and management capacities.

A list of potential new attractions is included in the mandate. Also there will be some investigation of what tourists want and whether or not they could be talked into visiting outside the busy summer months.

One operator of a bed and breakfast on the Peninsula had this to say. “We can’t just have an unlimited number of people sleeping here, therefore producing garbage and producing waste.”

Those folks then overrun the limited capacity of local attractions which leads to disappointed visitors who can’t get in to see what they want or to do what they want.

By now my friend from back in the day might be chuckling behind his hand even though he and everyone else in the region must come to understand that this is no laughing matter.

This region, like any others, can only handle so many visitors at a time. Making a plan to accomplish that will be difficult. Even harder will be possible ways to enforce it.